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Does each individual Soul, then, contain within itself such a
Love in essence and substantial reality?
Since not only the pure All-Soul but also that of the Universe
contain such a Love, it would be difficult to explain why our
personal Soul should not. It must be so, even, with all that has
life.
This indwelling love is no other than the Spirit which, as we are
told, walks with every being, the affection dominant in each
several nature. It implants the characteristic desire; the
particular Soul, strained towards its own natural objects, brings
forth its own Eros, the guiding spirit realizing its worth and
the quality of its Being.
As the All-Soul contains the Universal Love, so must the single
Soul be allowed its own single Love: and as closely as the single
Soul holds to the All-Soul, never cut off but embraced within it,
the two together constituting one principle of life, so the
single separate Love holds to the All-Love. Similarly, the
individual love keeps with the individual Soul as that other, the
great Love, goes with the All-Soul; and the Love within the All
permeates it throughout so that the one Love becomes many,
showing itself where it chooses at any moment of the Universe,
taking definite shape in these its partial phases and revealing
itself at its will.
In the same way we must conceive many Aphrodites in the All,
Spirits entering it together with Love, all emanating from an
Aphrodite of the All, a train of particular Aphrodites dependent
upon the first, and each with the particular Love in attendance:
this multiplicity cannot be denied, if Soul be the mother of
Love, and Aphrodite mean Soul, and Love be an act of a Soul
seeking good.
This Love, then, leader of particular Souls to The Good, is
twofold: the Love in the loftier Soul would be a god ever linking
the Soul to the divine; the Love in the mingling Soul will be a
celestial spirit.
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